What is Love
by magicandheroes
Summary: What was it that Steve once said? "It's kinda hard to find someone with shared life experience"


A/N: I just wanted to say sorry in advance.

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Neither of them expected it to turn out this way. Steve, at least, for his part, had tried for and maintained his thinking of love as a beautiful, positive thing. For a while, anyway. But after years of missed opportunities and saving seemingly everyone but himself, he resigned. He gave up. Not on Love itself, but on any possibility of that joyous experience of Love that he had thought was reality for so long. Of course he still loved her, he always would, but the world changed him and his apparently idealistic perspective. Instead he learned that his love wouldn't fade, even when sometimes he wanted it to, but it would stay, strong as ever, even growing over time, causing him more confusion and hurt from the constant mixture of warmth and hope and melancholy and despair that her presence brought him.

Natasha never believed in that bright description of love to begin with. That, she repeated to herself and others over and over again, was for children. With time, though, the adoration of Clint's kids got through to her; the loyalty of her friends and the willingness for self-sacrifice from Steve were rays of sunshine into her dark worldview. With every mission, even in the darkness, they were the light, and she began to think a little differently. So she chose Bruce to try with, but look how that ended up. Even she knew that wasn't true to him or her. So back she went to the renunciation of love… until she realized, in that decisive moment, the ultimatum, that it was Steve who had been there all along. Steve who she was loyal to, who she was willing to risk her life for, who she cared for differently and more than the rest. But then they both had to go on the run and by the time they found each other he had hardened.

Still, both their feelings remained, unspoken, un-acted-upon, as they worked side by side, hunting and training and running. Love was the string that pulled them to each other again and again, the superglue that stuck them together seemingly forever. Love was the force inside them that caused them to crack a smile, to remember silly little things from years prior, to find a light in the dark. It was those things, the recognition of how they only occurred with each other, that told Steve and Natasha of one another's feelings. Still, never discussed, but they knew. Or at least, they thought in occasional moments of uncertainty, they hoped. Somehow, that was enough. They went on like this for years, feeling and encountering and both, looking back on it, experiencing something magnificent and incredible and tragic and what they never imagined for themselves in a million years.

And after Steve made the ultimate sacrifice, for the world so that she could still be in it, if someone were to ask Natasha Romanoff whether she had ever experienced love, or whether her previous statement remained true… she would tell that person no, that Love is not for children. Because children are too innocent to handle it. Love is too much pain, anxiety, and .. kids - they don't deserve that. She doesn't deserve that, because she has finally realized that she is not the monster she convinced herself she was — but she can handle it. She'll accept the love she gave and received, and she'll be satisfied with just that for the rest of her life because she'll be ruined for any other person. What was it that Steve once said? "It's kinda hard to find someone with shared life experience..."

There was only him, and that's the thing about love — it's not that she doesn't believe in it; no, on the contrary, she knows it and believes in it, has lived it, and so knows the potential for beauty as much as for suffering. Because love is not what they show in the movies. Love does not conquer all. Love is not always enough. Love does not always find a way. Oh, Love is still there… it's just… there's no happy ending. And that's what makes it such a horrible thing. It could be beautiful but with the person she loves it's not, and she can't turn it off or just choose someone else and change it. No, these are the cards she's been dealt and really she doesn't even want anyone else, because she's been transformed by Love and by him .. but she's just saying… love isn't all it's cracked up to be.

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A/N: Again, I am so so sorry. This is definitely me coping and prepping and trying to be realistic but its so sad beautiful tragic and I know I shouldn't take it out on you but man I just had to get it out. I'm trying my darnedest to write feel good stuff before my soul is inevitably totally crushed on Thursday so, hopefully this will have helped and you'll be getting something cute tomorrow because I know if not then, it's never going to happen.. anyway, feel free to yell at me. I hate myself for being real :/ but ty for reading 3


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